This invention relates in part to computer-implemented shopping via a computer network, such as the Internet. An aspect of this that can be applied in other contexts is a computer operation control method that includes moving a scanner in optical communication with a computer screen such that the scanner detects indicia displayed on the screen and generates a signal in response. A particular application of the present invention uses computer screen bar code scanning with a product vendor's pre-existing database of product and bar code information.
Computer communication networks, today primarily the Internet with regard to global access, have facilitated the exchange of information and created new marketplaces. There have been many on-line retail businesses trying to sell products to on-line shoppers; however, at least some of these on-line retail businesses have failed to prosper or survive. Various reasons may account for these difficulties, but one may be a failure to make the on-line shopping experience easy or comfortable enough for the customer, whereby such businesses have failed to attract enough customers or enough sales volume to survive. Another reason may be that establishing the business's on-line facility has not been sufficiently integrated with the vendor's pre-existing “brick and mortar” facility.
Many prior on-line vending sites have been list-driven so that a shopper must read through lists of words describing the goods being marketed. This presents a different shopping experience than the highly non-textual one a customer has come to use when going to actual “brick-and-mortar” stores. For example, a customer may recognize a particular product by its packaging but not remember the specific brand name or the species (“Was that ‘original’ style I bought last time, or the ‘modified’ style? I don't remember that, but I'll recognize it when I see it.”). Another factor of this “appearance” or “image” type of shopping is the product placement within the physical store environment (“I don't remember what it was exactly, but it was in this part of the store next to the widgets.”) To accommodate such non-textual visual shopping techniques, on-line shopping needs to show actual product images in their actual store configurations (or at least substantially so).
Some on-line marketing sites may also be less than ideal for the vendors. Whereas creating and maintaining an on-line vending environment can result in an essentially independent entity from the vendor's existing business, it would be more efficient to build on pre-existing parts of the pre-existing business in creating the on-line part of the business. That is, there should be convergence rather than divergence between the tradition business and the new on-line business. Such convergence preferably can reduce at least some computer programming complexity. One way to facilitate such convergence is to visually replicate on-line the store appearance to enhance or create customer identification with a vendor's physical brick-and-mortar store. Such on-line convergence should preferably interface with the vendor's pre-existing operating system. For example, many vendors manage inventory through the use of bar code scanning as is well known. When a customer at a physical store location selects an item and takes it to a checkout counter, the cashier scans a bar code on the product or its packaging. This enters the transaction in the cash register, and it also is used by the vendor's background inventory management system. It would be desirable to incorporate a bar code (or other) scanning operation in on-line sales transactions for use in the same manner and with the same pre-existing vendor system as used for the physical store and inventory.
In view of the foregoing shortcomings, there is the need for an improved computer operation control method that can be applied at least to on-line vending transactions. There is the need for a product selection communication method such as may be used in selling products over a computer network, such as the Internet. There is also the need for an improved method and system for selling or ordering items via a computer system.